This is my first time raising baby chicks.A friend gave me 6 chickens(3 pairs of 3 diffrent breeds)but 4 of them either got sick,or drowned,or fell prey.One drowned because I raise baby ducks in the same area and i have a 3/4 foot deep waterhole.Anyway i have 1 male and 1 female white silkie bantam chickens.The tried to lay them but she gave up on them and moved on.She tried again and hatched 4 out of 9 eggs.(She did not lay on the first 3 for a couple of days).And they are now 3 days old.I observed that 3 out of 4 chicks are always around the female,and 1 is around the male.I also noticed that the male always has one chick under him at night when they sleep.Im wondering if this tells me i have 3 females and 1 male.And when are the chicks old enough to go on their own and/or start breeding?

Bulldawg: some roosters are just more nurturing than others! The chicks' parental preference does not indicate gender. Since you have only one male and one female, the rooster is less stressed to exert his dominance. Since he doesn't have to spend his time keeping everybody in line, he has time to spend with the chicks. (Please excuse me for sounding anthropomorphic - for all I know, your rooster may just be weird, but I do know of cases where roosters have raised chicks hatched from an incubator, and in each case they were single roosters or in very small flocks).

I have not seen my rosters to be very inteested in our chicks but our bourbon red tom turkey raised 6 poults this summer. We bought them as day olds from the feed store to put under our hen when her eggs failed to hatch. The hen refused to even stay near them but Elmer sure is a proud and attentive papa. Incidently the turkey hen stole a week old chick and two ducklings from their mothers and raised them. Go figure!

Some roosters are great fathers. Last spring my rooster adopted two small kittens. It was the strangest thing I ever saw. They were litte fuzzy yellow kittens and they became his "chicks". Unfortunately, neighbor dogs went after his kids and he died protecting them. He was a rosecomb light brown leghorn. He was a bachelor with no chickens for companions, just cats and horses. I have only just found another to replace him. And, yes, the dogs are dead.
Jody